The Folks at Fifty-Eight (15 page)

It was just gone six that same evening. Davis Carpenter had been travelling in the opposite direction, about to negotiate the same crowded thoroughfare, when the old man reappeared.

“Mr Carpenter. I do need to speak to you.”

Carpenter turned and glared, and then spoke in a voice heavily laced with exasperation.

“I believe I already told you, Mr Schulman. Talk to the FBI. I’m not the right person. I’m just a minor State Department official.”

The same sardonic smile relieved whiskered features.

“Oh, I think you are being modest, Mr Carpenter. I think you are far more important than that.

“You see, I need answers, Mr Carpenter, and so I intend stopping you every morning and every evening until you find time to speak to me. Or perhaps I should be talking to Mr Carlisle or Mr Allum?”

Davis Carpenter listened to the names of his superiors at the Office of Occupied Territories and realised the old man’s persistence was a product of knowledge and not chance.

“And if I do find the time to speak to you? Will you then leave me in peace?”

“You have my word.”

“Come to my office, tomorrow at ten. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get home.”

“Thank you. I will be there at ten precisely. Have a pleasant evening, Mr Carpenter.”

Carpenter nodded, and made his way across the busy street. When he reached the opposite sidewalk he stopped and looked back, but the old man was nowhere to be seen. He continued scanning, while his mind turned over the many possible reasons for the old man’s persistence.

Carpenter was still thinking about that as he climbed the stairs to his second-floor apartment in Woodley Park. He opened the door, took off his hat and coat and hung them in the hallway. Then he wandered into the kitchen, mumbled a perfunctory ‘hello darling’, and dutifully kissed an unsmiling wife on the cheek.

Davis Carpenter wasn’t surprised to see his wife looking unhappy. Clara Carpenter had felt and looked that way for almost seven years. He’d always known that she had never truly loved him, but seven years ago she had pretended to and that had been enough. In those days he had bought her affection, with jewellery and expensive vacations, and she pretended it was him and not the money that she loved. But those days were gone.

Carpenter could remember the exact time and day that Clara had stopped pretending. It had been 6.30 p.m. on the 3
^rd
September 1939, when he returned from work and told her that Britain and France had declared war on Germany. That was the day his overseas investments crashed. That was the day the money ran out.

He walked into the lounge, sat down in his favourite armchair and began reading the evening paper, as he always did. This evening, though, a jumble of thoughts disturbed his routine. He allowed the paper to fall to his lap, and stared at the wallpaper in unfocused reminiscence. Newspaper headlines held no interest for Davis Carpenter that evening, because he couldn’t get the memory of that frail old man out of his mind. Nor could he clear his mind of all those painful memories the old man’s sudden appearance had evoked.

For some minutes after that, he continued to sit and stare blankly into space; recalling the old man’s frailty and dogged determination, while so many terrible images of the Holocaust invaded his mind. He remembered the film, so damningly shown at the ongoing Nuremburg tribunals, with graphic evidence of genocide, and pictures of the aftermath’s horror that would forever shame a nation.

They were pictures of mass graves, and the tangled remains of countless women and children and old men, all haphazardly piled into sickening mountains of tragic humanity. They were pictures of emaciated human skeletons, still somehow clinging to life and staring back at the cameras insensitivity in bewilderment and gratitude. They were pictures of unspeakable horror, and the monumental suffering of an entire human race, a suffering beyond the belief of those who had not shared in the grief or lived through the abomination. They were pictures so graphically shocking they brought disgust and revulsion to the very soul of humanity.

“Davis, are you listening to me? I said, get that, will you?”

There had been a knock at the door. Carpenter had been so preoccupied it hadn’t registered, until his wife hollered at him. Her voice dismissed the images and interrupted his thoughts. For that he was grateful. He strode to the door, grumbling about needing some peace after a long day at the office, then slipped the chain and opened it, only to find the same incongruous homburg and whiskered features that had been uppermost in his thoughts just seconds earlier.

“Mr Schulman, you have to stop this. This is my home. This is not the way we conduct ourselves in America. I thought we had made an appointment for tomorrow morning.”

“Oh we did, Mr Carpenter, and that was most kind, but then I thought. Do I really want to talk to a senior State Department official who will give me a brief five minutes of official policy before showing me the door? Would it not be better to get away from shabby politics, meaningless rhetoric, and uncaring government protocols?”

The old man shrugged and smiled.

“That was when I decided to talk to Davis Carpenter, an ordinary decent human being, relaxing at home with his lovely wife. That was when I decided not to talk to an important senior government official at the all-powerful State Department.”

Carpenter wearily nodded.

“I can see your reasoning, Mr Schulman, but it has been a long day, and. . .”

“You said that you had not heard of a man named Wiesenthal, Mr Carpenter. I suppose there is no reason why you should, but have you ever heard of Mauthausen?”

Carpenter breathed a heavy sigh of exasperation.

“I believe so, yes. A Nazi labour camp, wasn’t it? Look, I don’t see what any of this has to do with me or my department. As I said before. . .”

“It was a death camp, Mr Carpenter. In fact it was worse than that. It was the death camp where they sent all those hundreds of thousands of innocent people they had somehow failed to murder in all those other death camps.

“I was there, you see, with Wiesenthal. We were two of the lucky ones, we survived. So many others did not. But now it is time for the guilty to pay for their crimes. Now it is the turn of all those millions of innocents who lie in anonymous graves, faceless and nameless and forgotten by the world. Now it is their time for justice.”

Carpenter quipped back, largely to combat an uncharacteristic sense of shame.

“But Mr Schulman, you must believe in justice and retribution through Almighty God, on the final day, on the day of reckoning? Shouldn’t you be leaving such vengeance to God, rather than taking justice into your own hands, vengeance is mine and all that?”

The old man shook his head.

“Mr Carpenter, I believe it is only through mankind that we meet God’s justice on earth, and yes, of course I pray to him, I pray to him every day. But when you have lived on this earth for as long as I, and when you have seen the many horrors that I have seen, you do not pray to God for justice and retribution. You pray only for his existence.”

An overwhelming sense of guilt engulfed Davis Carpenter as he studied the whiskered features and listened to Alfred Schulman speaking with such passion. It was a passion all the more intense for the old man’s frailty, using words all the more powerful for the suffering they described. More images of the Holocaust invaded his thoughts. He placed a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“Look, I’m so sorry. I know it must have been terrible. I sympathize with you, but I just don’t see what I can do to help you.”

“Davis, you do know your dinner’s spoiling?”

An angry wife had appeared from the kitchen. Carpenter immediately pulled back his hand. The momentary weakness had passed.

“Look, Mr Schulman, the war’s over. America spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives, making sure the Nazis didn’t succeed, but now it’s over and we must all move on. I can understand how you can never forget, but if we cannot forget, then we must all somehow try to forgive. I’m sorry if that seems like a meaningless cliché, but I can’t help you. I’m not the right man. I’m sorry.”

He backed away and began to close the door, but the old man moved with a speed that belied the frail appearance. He placed his foot against the door and glared as he spoke.

“I’m sorry, too, Mr Carpenter, about your dinner spoiling, but I was wondering if you would like to tell me about Camp King? I know you were there a few days ago. Perhaps you would like to tell me what you were doing, in a place that doesn’t officially exist? Perhaps you could also tell me who it was you met when you were there?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what. . .”

“Was it Heinrich Müeller, Mr Carpenter, or was it one of his vile henchmen? Is Müeller working for you now, Mr Carpenter?”

At the mention of Camp King, Carpenter had listened nervously. Few people in America had ever heard of the place; fewer still understood its purpose. But when the elderly Jew mentioned Heinrich Müeller, Davis Carpenter, hugely relieved, suddenly laughed.

“Heinrich Müeller? I take it you are referring to the former head of Section Four of Reich security, the former head of the Gestapo?”

The old man looked confused. A suddenly more recognizable and supercilious Davis Carpenter theatrically shook his head as he dropped the bombshell.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’ve had a wasted journey, my friend. I don’t know who told you that I’d been to Camp King to see Müeller, but I would have strong words with your informant if I were you.

“You see, you’ve come to the wrong town in the wrong country, Mr Schulman. You should be knocking on the door of a man called Lavrenti Beria. He’s the new Russian Deputy Premier, and Joseph Stalin’s overall head of espionage and terror. You will find him in Dzerzhinsky Square, not far from Red Square in the centre of Moscow. His office is on the third floor of a large yellow-brick building called the Lubyanka. You see, Mr Schulman, Heinrich Müeller works for Lavrenti Beria, and has done for some months.”

“Comrade Deputy Premier Beria, you honour us.”

“Anna, Anna, why so formal? Are we not old friends?”

Paslov remained in the lounge of his Leipzig apartment, listening intently as Anna finished greeting their unexpected guest.

“Of course we are old friends, Lavrenti. I apologize, but you are now such an important man, I did not want to appear presumptuous. Tell me, how is Nina? Is she well?”

“Fine, fine. I will tell her you asked.”

Stanislav Paslov’s thoughts raced as he switched off his music and stood waiting for his guest. For Beria to leave the security of Moscow was unusual. For him to travel to occupied Germany with no more than a few bodyguards was unheard of. As Beria wandered into the room, Paslov saw his eyes flicker left and right, missing nothing in that one brief scrutiny

In many ways, Lavrenti Beria reminded Paslov of the late and unlamented Heinrich Himmler: the shortness of stature and humourless peasant features, the pale complexion and receding hairline. Beria’s soft damp handshake, and Himmler’s general clamminess. The Mingrelian’s bulging-eyed stare, enlarged through round pince-nez eye-glasses, and the Bavarian’s cold-eyed stare, magnified by thick round granny-glasses. The Uriah Heep obsequiousness of Beria, and inoffensive facade of Himmler. It all served to further the resemblance and belie the brutality of genuine monsters.

But there was more to the comparison than mere appearance, because each man’s infamy lay in the brutal suppression of totalitarian states, and the personal security of paranoid, mass-murdering tyrants. Both held the sanctity of human life in contempt, and permeated an aura of fear that enveloped any who approached or dealt with them.

“Stanislav, it is good to see you again. How are you, my old friend? Was that Berlioz I heard just now?”

“A minor excess, Comrade, ‘La Damnation de Faust’. It is an inoffensive piece, and we are after all in Leipzig.”

Lavrenti Beria was obviously unaware of the connection. That didn’t surprise Paslov. Beria must have seen the record sleeve when he arrived, because he wouldn’t know Berlioz from Bach, and he certainly would never have heard of Goethe. Paslov dismissed the music’s insignificance with a wave of his hand and smiled as he greeted his old comrade.

“It is good to see you again, Comrade.”

Paslov waited until Anna had left and closed the door behind her before asking,

“So why are you here, Lavrenti? Is it to share a glass of wine and talk of the old days? Or is it to tell me you have a new master for me, one I might resent, and to assess my loyalty?”

Beria looked puzzled.

“I do not understand you, Stanislav. Who do you mean?”

Paslov allowed the fury to explode.

“Müller!” he roared. “Heinrich Müller. How could you ever employ such scum?”

The look graduated from puzzlement to perplexity.

“I take it you are referring to the Heinrich Müller, the head of the Nazi Gestapo?”

“You know I am.”

“But I thought the Americans recruited Müller: the U.S. Army, they say.”

Paslov was too angry to play games. He, nonetheless, chose his words carefully.

“Lavrenti, we have not always agreed, but we have never lied to each other.”

Beria held no scruples, and would lie without conscience. Paslov knew that, but he also knew that Beria held their friendship in high regard. The Mingrelian returned his stare for a few seconds, before abandoning the façade and confirming the truth.

“Stanislav, Heinrich Müeller’s recruitment is an important state secret. The Americans still believe he is assisting them. I have to know how you discovered this information. I have to know who else is aware of it.”

In contrast to Beria’s caution, Paslov’s answered without hesitation. He said a friend in America had sent him a telegraph. The American army may still believe that Müeller was helping them, but the U.S. State Department knew all about the double-dealings of Beria’s new Nazi lapdog. Davis Carpenter had told his friend about Müeller’s defection. His friend had asked Paslov to help bring him to justice.